Kitabı oku: «Zero Point Ukraine», sayfa 4
Essay II
The Regime of Continuous War: Mobilization, Militarization, and Practices of Maintaining an Undeclared State of Emergency in Soviet Ukraine From the 1920s to the 1940s
Since about that time, war had been literally continuous,
though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war.
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
The idea of “world revolution” seemed to have been taken off Stalin’s agenda after his decision “to build socialism in one country”1 instead. Yet this new concept did not spare the world from the chance of war. On the one hand, the concept of “world revolution” was envisioned and fulfilled by, among other methods, the practices of the Comintern; it was based on the reshaped “new-old” imperial view of the territories, borders, and “spheres of influence” of the USSR; it was implemented through signing an agreement with Hitler and dividing the spheres of influence. On the other hand, there were unresolved “questions” of World War I (revenge, aspirations for nation-state building, ongoing colonial expansion, territorial pretensions). Waiting for war, longing for war, being under the threat of war, fearing war became an all-embracing and multifunctional influencing factor that affected people in different parts of the world. After World War I and revolutions, caused or conditioned by it, European countries had military regimes with well-established mobilization.
In some countries, these military regimes became independent and dominant (the USSR, Germany, Italy), in others they marked the general decline of ideas of democracy or signaled a rising inclination to authoritarian forms of government (Poland, Spain, Bulgaria). Yaroslav Hrytsak notes that “Central and Eastern Europe became the cradle of totalitarianism as an ideology and political system, and Ukrainians as one of the largest nations of the region experienced the direct influence of its Soviet variant.”2
The state of continuous war, in which European countries were trapped, had some common and distinctive features. Among the common features were expansion of “exceptional” elements (up to a permanent state of emergency), social mobilizations (both systematic, institutionally authorized, and situational or temporary), repressions, terror and terrorism (both state-administered and aimed against the state), local armed collisions and local wars (both within and beyond the borders of a state), militarist rhetoric and propaganda (both defensive and offensive). All these processes were overt or disguised, visible, sometimes instrumental; or, on the contrary, they could be “invisible,” intentionally classified, secret or concealed, or “shadowy.”
As Michael Geyer notes, during this period, “all the nations resorted to a tangled web of compulsion and suasion, developed national forms of management.”3 In the new interwar politics, according to Peter Holquist, there was a “tendency to deploy the population itself as a resource (reflected in the use of terms such as Menschenmaterial, the Russian ‘human power’ (liudskaya sila), or the British government’s concept of an ‘economy of manpower’).”4
Analyzing the interwar years in Europe according to the categories of total war—both external (interstate) and internal—George Liber emphasizes that total wars “recast the world’s economies, political systems, social institutions, and cultures. By altering customs and behaviour, artistic and intellectual ideas and practices, the status of women, and the role of the family, each of these violent outbreaks shattered the level of social cohesiveness within each empire or state. Not all of these developments proved cataclysmic. Some evolved in small, very subtle ways, maturing decades later.”5 Ukraine was among the lands that endured the cataclysm of a total war between the two world wars.
Permanent use of the elements of the “state of emergency” and “emergency powers” in politics and economy by the leaders of European states was a subject of reflection, including scholarly reflection, by its contemporaries. During the early 1920s, Carl Schmitt, in his works From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to Proletarian Class Struggle (1921) and Political Theology (1922), formulated the theories of the “state of exception” and “exception.” Despite being, to a certain extent, an apologist of the “state of exception” as a means of maintaining order in the state and to restore normalcy. Eventually evolving an apologetic account of Nazi politics, Carl Schmitt back in the early 1920s made a clear distinction between “sovereign dictatorship” and “commissarial dictatorship.” He pointed out that commissarial dictatorship was guided not by law but by the leader’s (sovereign’s) orders and this meant a significant difference between the rule of law and the rule of its actual implementation.6
The effect of such state, according to Giorgio Agamben, was manifested in the “isolation of the ‘force of law’ from the law.” “Commissarial dictatorship represents a state of the law in which the law is not applied, but remains in force. Instead, sovereign dictatorship … represents a state of the law in which the law is applied, but is not formally in force.” The state of exception formed “an anomic space, in which what is at stake is a force of law without law.”7
Soviet legislators developed and adopted laws and regulations about the “state of emergency” on the basis of Bolshevik vision of the “public good” and of the established state tradition of the Russian Empire where whole generations, according to Vladimir Gessen, “had not seen any other political system than the system of exception, extraordinary in its cruelty and political measures; where the general laws of the Russian Empire could only be learned from books.”8 In the USSR this mix of the intentions of “revolutionary expediency” and the tradition of permanent state violence produced a situation where “exceptional” politics received a legal basis, where state-imposed violence had already been committed and the practices of semi-martial law became a part of everyday life.
One of the common and well-studied “plots” related to the USSR entering World War II is the story about the mobilization activities undertaken by the authorities on the brink of World War II and after June 22, 1941, when another phase of the war began.
It should be noted that aside from providing the factual outline, determining the chronological and political logic of events, this “mobilization story” played a significant role in forming the myth of the “Great Patriotic War.” It painted a historical picture centered around a slight emphasis on the unexpectedness, abruptness, suddenness of war, which, although “ripening in the militarist circles of Western imperialism,” nevertheless caught the “peaceful Soviet state” by surprise. Arguments in favor of this picture were the facts of the clear unpreparedness for war of the military and productive facilities. The concept of “Germany attacking without a declaration of war” backed up the idea of abruptness and explained the gaps in defense preparedness.
Yet analysis of the social and political processes instigated by the Bolshevik authorities in the 1920s and 1930s gives grounds to argue that mobilization and militarization were integral parts of the policy of the Soviet state. Namely, there was the resolution “On the emergency measures for maintenance of revolutionary order,” adopted in April, 1925 by the Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union9 that was in force till the very start of Nazi aggression. Constitutional changes regarding martial law were made only in 1938 (13 years later!), when article 49 of the Constitution was amended (the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was granted the right to declare martial law in a given region or across the USSR in the interest of defending the USSR or preserving public order and state security). All these constituent components of the state of emergency and martial law, set out in legislation, were a constant of everyday life and formed a specific, undeclared state of continuous war long before the start of World War II and the official declaration of “martial law” on June 22, 1941.10
The above-mentioned documents are interesting not so much for the details of the distribution of power, as regarding the measures set out as legal and authorized during a state of emergency or martial law. According to the Resolution of 1925 and the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 22, 1941, military authorities were empowered to:
impose labor conscription,
impose (quarter) someone as a lodger,
impose rationing,
requisition vehicles and property,
impose controls on working hours,
limit entry and exit,
carry out administrative evictions of questionable individuals,
declare a special legal regime that allows the transfer of civilians to be tried in special courts (courts-martial), etc.11
Analysis of the logic of development of Soviet society allows us to state that, though termed as “emergency,” “exceptional” or “martial,” these special legal (in fact, illegal) modes were implemented by the Bolshevik authorities, both temporarily and permanently, since the early 1920s.
The elements of the undeclared state of emergency were applied to various categories of citizens, to certain strata of society, to whole communities and nations, all of which the regime desired to make homogeneous, Soviet only. Bolsheviks waged both symbolic and real war against those whom they designated as “exploiter classes” and “enemies of the people,” against “anti-Soviet elements” and “traitors of the motherland,” against “spies” and “wreckers,” against “enemy nations” and states designated as enemies. So-called “class wars” were often layered on top of colonial ones, as in Ukraine. Sometimes, the dagger of the elements of martial law was pointed at the “hegemon”—the proletarian class that should have been the social basis and main supporting force of the quasi-military acts of authorities.
Each Bolshevik war was supported by a large-scale propaganda campaign that perfected the formula for a conflict: the “other party” was always the attacker, instigator or driving force in the collision.
War Against the Peasants
The war against the peasants had the most significant implications and was the most consistent policy of killing the Ukrainian nation; in the early 1920s official discourse pictured it as a “struggle against banditry”; in the late 1920s it was a “war against a kurkul”; and in the early 1930s it already had all the features of a war against Ukrainians as a nation. The Canadian historian Lynne Viola, analyzing relations between the Soviet authorities and the peasants, terms them a “conquest campaign,” a “war of cultures,” and a “civil war between state and peasantry.”12 Yet it was also an imperial war, aimed not only at suppressing the actual resistance of Ukrainians, but also at suppressing even the potential for it in the future.
According to official records, nearly 50,000 peasants were involved in the riots against Bolsheviks in the early 1920s; they were armed with rifles, machine guns, and cannons. According to the Ukrainian historian Oleh Polianskyi, the total number of insurgents in Ukraine was about 150,000.13
The measures undertaken against the Ukrainian peasants, in addition to the propaganda labeling them as “bandits,” were completely motivated by the logic of war and colonial intention of plundering the territories. Vladimir Lenin openly disclosed Bolsheviks’ intentions regarding Ukraine in the following statement, made in 1920: “We take bread from Siberia, we take bread from Kuban, but we cannot take it from Ukraine, as there is war waging there, and the Red Army has to fight against the bandits Ukraine is swarming with.”14
Alongside the Red Army units, the VNK (Cheka), and the special forces, the armed bands of the Committees of Poor Peasants also participated in the elimination of the peasants who were dissatisfied with the politics of requisition or, much less frequently, with the political agenda.15 The Permanent Conference on Struggle with Banditry at the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR (Radnarkom) considered the issue “On the food repressions by the bandits’ hide-outs” on three occasions. As a result of these meetings, the instruction for conducting food repressions against the Ukrainian peasants was issued.16 The pickets detachments, positioned at all lines of communication and railway junctions, also joined the war against the peasants.
At this stage of the war, the local authorities imposed military justice. For instance, the Mariupol executive committee in May 1921 resolved to form a special troika, “‘because of the banditry swirling in the district and because of the resistance of the kurkul elements’ authorized to pass sentences ‘up to capital punishment’.”17
The next stage of the war against the Ukrainian peasants in the late 1920s and early 1930s was “embellished” with the cynical propaganda accusations that the villagers were the ones who fought against Soviet rule, and thus were the ones who were the aggressors torturing the Soviet workers, city folk, and the soldiers of the Red Army. Joseph Stalin formulated this accusation in a letter to Mikhail Sholokhov: “grain-growers … were willing to leave workers, the Red Army—without food. … grain-growers, in fact, waged a ‘quiet’ war against Soviet rule. A war by famine, dear comrade Sholokhov.”18
Whether it was a piece of manipulation like the Shelling of Mainila, or, as Timothy Snyder considers, Stalin truly believed that he was fighting the war against peasants for food,19 nevertheless, all the elements of martial law were used to suppress and exterminate millions of Ukrainians. Valeriy Vasyliev noted that the resistance of the Ukrainian peasantry to the “socialist transformation of a village” often turned into an armed struggle with the authorities; in March 1930, in the border areas, it developed into a true peasant war: 1.2 million people actively participated in resistance to Soviet collectivization in Ukraine.20
Well-armed, “the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army” was directly engaged in the war against the Ukrainian peasants.21 Using the 1920s’ experience of “food repressions of the bandits,” the Bolshevik regime implemented cannibalistic practices in the extermination of the Ukrainian peasantry. The mechanism of suppression by famine of 1932–1933 included a requisition paradigm, the ban on movement (restricted, in particular, by the passport system, imposed in 1932), forced labor, administrative evictions, use of force against civilians, and rationing; consequently, millions of people died.
However, even after the “victory” over the Ukrainian peasants and the complete establishment of the kolkhoz order, the grain-growers were the community that continued to live under the state of “emergency” and, as it were, paid reparations to the victors, who built a big camp for them, fenced them in with various restrictions, discriminations, and repressions. The obligatory labor of the kolkhoz peasants was impounded through several methods: food requisitions; “red caravans” (chervoni valky) (“exceptional measures to remove villagers’ food, when it was requisitioned by caravans of horse-drawn or automobile transport”),22 grain procurement (which, “as it was mandatory and implemented through punitive and repressive measures, was, in fact, one of the fiscal forms of the corvées imposed on Ukrainian villagers”);23 through the already mentioned refusal to issue passports that “assigned” peasants to collective farms by force; through the labor organization in the kolkhozes and wages, when people called trudoden (labor-day, a day of labor) a trupoden (a day to die).24
Shortly before World War II erupted, the resolution by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union of May 27, 1939, determined the obligatory annual minimum number of labordays. Able-bodied kolkhoz members (men 16-60 years of age, females 16-55 years of age) had an annual average of 60–100 work days (varying in different regions). Villagers who did not meet this standard were expelled from the collective farms.25 From the start of World War II in 1939–1940, peasants were to provide a share of almost everything they produced in their personal household plot: grain, potatoes, meat, dairy, eggs, etc.
Obligatory Labor
As George Orwell wrote in his Nineteen Eighty-Four anti-utopia that brilliantly illuminated the very core of the totalitarian regime, “War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact”;26 “the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.”27 The Soviet war against its subjects, as mentioned earlier, employed various propaganda framings: from the class struggle against the “former people” and other “internal enemies” up to the fierce fight with the “capitalist surroundings.”
Under such circumstances, with “wartime” measures adopted, one feature of the undeclared martial law became more visible, rationalizing the implementation of the other elements of the “exceptional legal regime.”
From the very start of the “proletarian” war against the “exploiter classes” that were supposedly attempting to infringe upon “the state of workers and peasants,” Bolshevik leaders in the late 1910s and early 1920s first introduced obligatory labor, created “labor armies,” with those who violated the discipline undergoing repressions. Villagers, unemployed townsmen, Red Army soldiers, and workers were subjected to labor mobilization; their labor was used in the construction or restoration of industrial objects, transport routes, etc. Unauthorized absence or leaving the workplace was considered a criminal offense. During the New Economic Policy (NEP), the practices of obligatory labor were segmented: mainly it was the “vanguard of society”—Komsomol and the Party—that were subjected to them. Members of these organizations were in a half-forced, half-voluntary manner involved in mass campaigns, sending their representatives as political troops to fight the church, bureaucracy, etc. in the villages.28
During the 1920s, this organized exploitation was carried out according to five-year plans and in the name of accelerated industrialization. Still, all the power of the regime of an undeclared state of emergency was directed against those proclaimed not only “class-friendly” but those in whose name and for whom the new Soviet society was being built in the first place. Forced labor and components of the state of continuous war, linked to it and affecting it, became the features of everyday life of Soviet proletarians.
The obligatory labor of workers was implemented when they were dragged into the system of “records,” “plan overfulfillments,” “socialist competitions,” social guarantees (at times, in the form of ration coupons), in shock brigades (udarniki), worked long hours and were compulsory “attached” to a production site (institution), with punitive sanctions waiting for them in case of a breach of the working regime. The Russian scholar Georgiy Cheremisinov remarks that the “economic practice of 1929–1933 was, to a certain extent, a ‘rehearsal’ of the mobilization of the Soviet economy in 1941–1945.”29
When industrial enterprises and industries emerged during the period between 1930 and 1940, this practice was not abolished; indeed—because of the significant militarization of economy—it became even more widespread.
Obligatory labor was extorted by more repressive methods: restriction on movement, severely harsh control over working hours. The Bolshevik state took the following practical steps to appropriate/regulate people’s time (or, in Mikhail Heller’s terms, to “nationalize”30 time): (a) changes to the calendar,31 (b) “planification,”32 (c) disciplinary practices, (d) taking control of leisure time, (e) organization (disorganization) of everyday structures, (f) social policy—gifts of months and years of life without work. As Volodymyr Holovko puts it, “the quintessence of the total state’s control over the time of an individual and of whole strata of society was imprisonment.”33
Researchers Olga Movchan and Victor Hudz have analyzed the measures undertaken by the state and the party in order to standardize working time and form vertical or quasi-horizontal systems of surveillance and control of its “proper use.” Among other things, they noted that, “according to the internal regulations, set out by the People’s Commissariat for Labor of the USSR (NKP) on December 17, 1930, working hours were strictly fixed: those who were late were registered and permitted to return to work only after special authorization; those who were permitted to leave early had to get a pass first; in the case of absence from work, a worker had to inform his foreman or manager on that day or the day before.
“Advanced” tables of penalties, adopted by the NKP in 1932, included the following penalties and fines for violation of working discipline: a reprimand to be announced everywhere in the facility, reported to the factory committee and shop committee, and noted in the worker’s records; trial by a comrades’ court of the facility; also dismissal without prior warning and without severance along with a ban on working at plants or in transportation for 6 months.”34
As not only “the retrograde elements” and “former people,” but also the members of the party themselves violated working discipline, the highest party leadership was sometimes also involved in the management of everyday work. For instance, a party collegium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine (CP(b)U) adopted the resolution “On the issue of absenteeism of members of the party and candidates,” according to which the factories’ and plants’ party cells and party organizations were allowed to resort to the most rigorous measures: “expel the absentees from the party as disorganizers of production who with their conduct undermine the authority of the party in the eyes of the workers.”35 Dismissal and expulsion from the party meant not only being deprived of minimal income, but also risk of imprisonment and even death.
During the 1930s, the “taming the hegemon”36 policy was already gaining ground. In November, 1932 the Central Executive Committee passed the resolution “On dismissal for absence without a valid reason,” according to which absentees were not only dismissed from the workplace but also stripped of social benefits (housing, food coupons, insurance, work experience not recorded, etc.).37 In December 1938 the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union issued another resolution aimed at consolidating work discipline;38 the list of crimes regarding the lack of diligence at work was extended even further. Among the penal acts were not only absence and laziness, but also an early start at work and protracted dinner breaks.
